In the park August is over but there’s still time to enjoy open-air theatre season. Presented in York’s Rowntree Park, Matt Aston’s new monologue Every Time a Bell Rings is performed by Lisa Howard and set over the lockdown Easter weekend. It’s part of Engine House’s series of socially distanced park-bench productions (until 5 September), which includes a teddy bears’ picnic for children. In Hove’s Dyke Road Park, Brighton Open Air Theatre has a comedy-heavy programme including Bridget Christie and Shappi Khorsandi, plus Mischief Theatre improvising a movie on stage (9-10 September). At Regent’s Park in London, the superb 90-minute, interval-free concert version of Jesus Christ Superstar runs until 27 September and can be watched either inside the theatre or, thanks to a giant screen, outside on the lawn. Down the pub Open Bar theatre company is toasting five years of producing Shakespeare in Fuller’s pub gardens. Its 2020 show is The Tempest, complete with an aerial Ariel, which tours the south of England until 30 September. At south-east London’s White Bear pub theatre, Michael McManus’s new play The Trial of Donald Wolfit (23-26 September) raises a glass to the eponymous actor-manager. At the nearby Eagle bar in Vauxhall, the newly launched Garden theatre presents an intimate revival of Stephen Schwartz’s princely musical Pippin (8 September to 11 October) starring Joanne Clifton. At a sports ground Two nifty new outdoor productions make the pitch their stage. Scoot Theatre’s musical spin on A Midsummer Night’s Dream is reaching the end of its tour of the country’s cricket clubs, with dates in Surrey and Berkshire (2-6 September). At Dagenham and Redbridge Football Club’s grounds, Michelle Payne’s play Squad Goals (14 September-10 October) follows a group of women who set up a five-a-side team. At a festival Cirencester’s Barn Theatre wraps up this summer’s BarnFest with The World Goes ’Round (until 5 September), a revue celebrating the songs of John Kander and Fred Ebb, with numbers from Chicago, Cabaret, Kiss of the Spider Woman and more. London’s Greenwich and Docklands international festival (6-12 September) features the Bauhaus-inspired Rainbow Ballet and Told By an Idiot’s Get Happy. There’s a festival spirit at Mold’s Theatr Clwyd (4-27 September), whose hillside season of “bring-your-own-chair” outdoor shows includes a script reading of English, a new comic romance by Tim Price. Jenny Fitzpatrick and Nick Barstow in The World Goes ’Round. Jenny Fitzpatrick and Nick Barstow in The World Goes ’Round. Photograph: Benjamin Collins By a place of worship The inaugural Liverpool theatre festival (11-19 September) showcases local talent in the grounds of St Luke’s Bombed-Out Church: Andrew Lancel stars in Swan Song by Jonathan Harvey, and there’s a verbatim Toxteth drama, Sweet Mother, plus comedy and cabaret. Music-theatre troupe the Three-Inch Fools take their three-hander version of A Midsummer Night’s Dream on tour to Coventry cathedral (2 September) before heading on to abbeys, castles and village greens around the UK. In an actual theatre (!) With lockdown restrictions now eased for indoor productions, audiences are gradually returning to the aisles – this time with a bit more leg room thanks to social distancing. There are some major programmes to come next month – including at Home in Manchester, Nottingham Playhouse and Stephen Joseph theatre in Scarborough. For September, there’s Sleepless, a musical version of Sleepless in Seattle at the new Troubadour Wembley Park theatre (until 27 September). Bristol Old Vic’s Garden stage hosts touring company the Handlebards who rev up the comedy in their version of Romeo and Juliet (5-6 September). Lawrence Batley theatre in Huddersfield, which has created a range of ingenious digital productions during lockdown, now unveils a September lineup on its stage including the variety night Live from the LBT on Saturdays (5-26 September). London’s Bridge theatre has also reopened in style, with a repertoire of a dozen monologues including David Hare’s Covid-19 dispatch Beat the Devil, starring Ralph Fiennes (until 31 October); Inua Ellams’s autobiographical An Evening With an Immigrant (18 September to 15 October); and Alan Bennett’s Talking Heads (7 September to 31 October), performed by a staggering lineup including Lesley Manville, Lucian Msamati and Imelda Staunton. The repertoire runs until 31 October, by which time it is hoped that more theatres will be able to welcome audiences back.